The Dungeon Con: One Foot in the Grave ( Hank Grave Book 1): One Foot in the Grave (Hank Grave series)

by Marty Myers

  Hank looked down on their torn dead bodies and felt anguish. Then he felt the summoning from downstairs and was drug to the great hall beneath. There Provoas sat upon his ornate stone chair upon the dais he had recently carved in the great hall. “ I am disappointed Hank.” he said, ” I know the first kill can be hard, but my directions were clear.” Provoas shouted, “ You will remember who is master here and who is the servant!” With that Provoas’s death bolts wracked Hanks immaterial form up and down as he punished him for his disobedience. To Hank it seemed to go on forever as it seared his soul from the outside and through the bond from within as well. But eventually, it stopped.

  “ You will kill any adventurer you find inside these dungeon walls Hank, unless I command otherwise. Never give a cleric or a magician a chance to undo your work or cast against you when you don’t have to. That cleric could have called for divine help if he had thought about it. An angel hearing a plea and coming to answer it would be a big problem for us. Once he was here my masking of the rituals downstairs would not be sufficient to hide them from the Light. If it weren’t for the exceptional amount of effort the Darkness and I have put into your creation and the improvement in your workmanship this hall shows I would continue to punish you now for a long time indeed. But I need this finished.”

  “ You are to get back to work on this floor of the dungeon with Alastor. After you have finished here you two can go back up to the first floor and repair any flaws in our defenses you have seen. I will have Tar for you two tonight to spread upon the ceiling up there. After all of that, we shall have another tutoring session to improve upon your spellcraft. Now leave me before my patience with you runs out.”

  Hank drifted out of the great hall to the entrance where the doors should hang when they got them. There Alastor stood awaiting him. His shoulders were stooped and he was looking away from his friend feeling sorry for him having just suffered from the same lash he was used to getting for disappointing Provoas. Their bond let all of this through and they quickly shied away from thinking about it anymore. Instead they began carving out the rest of the large hallway they would need for the tall doors. Despite the punishment and the long hours spent working Hanks energy levels slowly refilled from the silver chord and through his aura all around them absorbing the ambient Darkness and Death energies. Alastor was almost as resilient and between them, they made significant progress on expanding the dungeon’s heart.

  Hank threw himself into the work and tried not to think about much of anything for a while. More hours went by as they relied on the dwarfs memories of defensive works to try to layout the hallways and rooms and Hank came up with an interesting idea for the doorways defense. They would make the doorways fairly thick and leave room in each of them for a deep set of tracks in the walls and floor to fit a second big solid stone doorway in to block it off. They wouldn’t need to come up with any way to move or slide them Alastor and he would simply teleport them in and out of the way when they were needed. It wouldn’t be as thick or durable as the walls but it would be quite a bit tougher than just having a closed door. Best of all one of these couldn’t be picked by a crafty thief or rogue type as there was no trick to move it other than the one they’re unusual teleportation gave them. They carefully cut the stone doors out of the sturdiest stone Hank could identify and then he focused his earth energies into them to make them more durable still.

  Finally, they felt they had done enough down here to go back up to the first two floors and fix some of their mistakes. Alastor had already teleported away all of the scree from the lower pass without saying anything to Hank. They brought up some skeletons and teleported in some soil and dirtied everything up in the cellar and the first floor cells and guard room. They removed the stone blocks from the privy holes and then went down into the 2nd floor to tidy up.

  Hank looked at the remains of the adventurers again for a minute. He still felt conflicted about them but said, “ Alastor help me raise these guys as zombies. There is no sense in them going to waste.” They managed to raise the ax man and the mage and Hank set about repairing them with a couple bone path chants until they were intact enough to be of service. Next they tried raising the other two as zombies but met with a lot of resistance. Alastor finally gave up after three tries, as the cleric who’s body seemed completely proof against his efforts remained firmly dead.

  The rangers body though kept absorbing Hanks necromantic chants energies but refused to raise as a zombie. Hank took a closer look at the body and found that somehow the guys spirit was still hanging on to the body. As he saw this new information from the grimoire played out in his mind. Here was a possibility to create a more powerful undead servant if he could master it. “ Alastor this guys spirit is still in there. The grimoire is telling me I can make him into a wight if I do it right. I think I am going to try it. So be ready if something goes wrong.”

  First Hank set a basic circle around the body to keep outside influences out and keep the wight in if it rose in place and tried to escape while he tried to master it. Unlike lower forms of undead the wight would have a mind of its own, whether it was a lot like its former mortal self or completely different couldn’t be ascertained until it was created. If left alone the body might have risen over time on its own considering all the dark energies down here, but by taking over the process it gave Hank a much greater chance of mastering the wight that rose. Hank began the chant, he almost stumbled over parts of it as it felt harder than any necromancy he had done thus far. His energies poured into the circle and the body as he continued calling upon the spirit within the flesh to draw from his power and take up his form and flesh once more.

  Birch had been laying here for quite awhile, he saw his friends go down and had taken several terrible wounds himself. He was just trying to hang on even though he knew it was probably hopeless. Still, as long as he was thinking there had to be some small chance he would make it out of this. Then from far away he heard some chanting, it sounded like someone calling out to him, maybe one of the others had somehow been knocked out instead of dead and was trying to get his attention or heal him? The voice didn’t sound right though, maybe it was another party of adventurers, the echoing might be from them talking while coming down here, the stonework did strange things to sound. He felt really weird as if his whole body had gone to sleep but was now waking up with pins and needles despite that he tried his best to answer them but no sound emerged.

  The body twitched and shook for a minute before the eyes opened revealing cloudy white orbs with a blue glow to them similar to Hanks own. The body grew paler as if all the blood was evaporating from it and the features drew in and became harsher and tighter. His nails grew a bit longer and sharper, then they darkened to a purplish tint. The body suddenly sat up and the head swung around to look at him. It was really quite creepy Hank thought. He continued the chant as necromantic energy poured out of him and into the newly risen wight. Lightening quick the wight rolled onto its feet and tried to run from the circle. It rebounded off of it as Hank’s head rang like a bell. He poured more energy into the circle and finished the chant.

  “You won’t be going anywhere until we agree to something,” Hank said. The wight, Birch cursed at him using some phrases that Hank hadn’t heard up to this point. “ You killed me and my friends, you specter of Death, damn you,” he yelled! Hank began to wonder if this had been a bad idea, what was he thinking raising this elf and trying to make him serve him. Wasn’t that just what Provoas and the Dark were doing to him? When he really thought about it and looked inside himself he started cursing too. Here he was going along thinking and doing things he wouldn’t normally be doing just as Alastor had warned him of a few days ago. His master had commanded him to keep practicing the spells and knowledge from the grimoire and here when the circumstances had triggered more information from it to dump into his mind he had immediately acted on it and began casting more spells to learn them as he had been ordered.

  He gave Alastor a pain
ed look and then turned back to the wight. “ Look I don’t deny it. I am bound to serve my own master here and forced to follow his commands,” Hank said. “ I tried not to kill you and your party until it became too much to fight against. Even bringing you back like this turns out to be another command by my master implanted in my head. Well I’ve cast the spell now to create a wight. I might be able to drain you and destroy your undead existence now if that is what you want. That too could be interpreted as a learning experience to satisfy the geas,” he muttered. At hearing this the wight quieted down and looked at him.

  “ So, Hank said, “ do you want to continue this undead existence or do you want me to destroy you and send you off to wherever the spirits of people go around here?” Birch took a minute and gathered himself and asked, “ what does being like this entail?” “ Well, Hank said, a wight is a higher order of undead with its own mind, thoughts and will. I will warn you now that Provoas my master isn’t going to let you run around here or escape unbound. If I don’t destroy you your going to end up bound as Alastor and I are. Either to me or to Provoas. I mean I guess I could let Alastor here bond with you?” Both Alastor and the wight recoiled in horror at that suggestion. Seeing this Hanks said, “Okay, okay I get it, not going to do that.”

  “ Anyway a wight’s existence is almost eternal, as long as there is sufficient necromantic energies within your body your spirit will continue to inhabit it. You should be stronger, faster, and tougher than you were before dying, with more of a chance of being mystically aware now too. Your eyes are seeing with soul sight instead of how they used to. Your senses of hearing should be better, I think your sense of touch may suffer like most undead do. You also may be able to drain off the life energies of enemies by touch. The grimoire says some wights can. It also says that you will likely grow stronger as your body takes in more life essence from people you kill and converts it to death energies, same thing with absorbing straight necromantic energies and dark essence to a lesser degree. You might even eventually develop some extra abilities in time. That’s about it.”

  “ As to being bound, some wights that rise naturally are bound to the place that they came to die/rise in with strong in necromantic energies like a graveyard or battlefield. While others can freely roam about. Many are either created purposely like you were to serve a necromancer or to lead lesser undead for them. Seems like you might be able to learn to order or command some skeletons or zombies too.”

  Birch spoke up, “ that was very odd sounding, how you rattled all that off. Was that from a book?” Hank looked sheepish, “ yeah I kinda got a book stuck in my head currently. Anyway, you don’t care for Alastor here and trust me, I am nicer than Provoas is and he is far less evil than his master the Dark , so I am going to say I’m your best bet if you want to keep on going. To whit, I am the lesser of two evils, or I mean many evils.” Birch gave him another long look at that but then agreed. “So, Birch said, “ I am called Birch and I agree to be bound to you, what more do I need to do?” “ Well hi I am Hank Graves and I guess I’ll just cast the binding running through my head and we will go from there. Try not to resist as you feel it settle upon you and it will be a whole lot less unpleasant than it could be. Who knows you might actually get a boost from being bound to me. If nothing else you likely won’t have to steal life force from others so much as I have a decent amount of necronomic energies that should trickle down the bond to you.” Then he began.

  Alastor refused to learn or be part of the binding part of the ritual, he could feel the weight of the geas pushing Hank to learn everything in the book through their bond, but luckily he didn’t suffer under it and detested the practice of forcing bindings upon others. He did appreciate that Hank had tried to let the wight choose before setting it up and he watched as Hank cast it without adding any more harsh conditions to the bindings.

  Once the binding was done Hank released the circle and Birch stepped out to start his new life. Hank had Alastor teleport the other zombies and the cleric’s body down to the lower level to get the reminder of the party wipe away from Birch. “ It is our job to build and safeguard this dungeon for Provoas,” Hank explained. “ I was listening in to you and your party since you came to the scree pile down in the pass. Apparently, I made some mistakes that may have given this location away to you and your group. I want you to help me go through and fix everything we can up here to make it look more natural and to hide our presence here.”

  As Hank talked to Birch he felt the bond settle over him more completely and he felt his earlier animosity for his new master began to fade. He still remembered his friends deaths but the harsh edge of his emotions softened and he found his thinking changing. Hank continued on talking oblivious to Birches changing feelings. He had tried to cast the bond so it wasn’t as tight as the one he had with either Provoas or Alastor so he didn’t feel much through it. “ But first I want you to walk me through exactly how you ended up coming here looking for us.” “ Well Birch said there was this farmer …

  Chapter 13

  Much later The Darkness unexpectedly arrived. Hank as always could feel its horrendous presence immediately when it entered into his dungeon. It swept around the dungeon inspecting their progress before it shot into the altar room.It was down there for a few hours casting summons and working other Dark magics that Hank could only dimly feel and could not understand.

  Then it summoned Hank and Alastor down to the altar room. When they appeared the sight made Hank feel like throwing up. Two skeletons with heavy bone alterations the Dark was piloting around, were in the process of flaying his skin and flesh down to the bones one limb at a time. Then with surgical precision, they carefully pulled it back out of the way while Provoas chanted and a tall Dark Fallen Angel worked at inscribing runes and symbols upon the surface of his bones in long strings of characters Hank could not read. Then his flesh was smoothed back out onto the bones and healing spells closed it back up before they moved on to the next section.

  As Hank was starring in horror at the scene before him, the Darkness spoke to them. “ The forces of Light are moving faster than I anticipated, they are sending out angels and many mortal search parties around the realm trying to find us here. I have set in motion several diversions elsewhere that may distract them from finding this place. I need you two to hurry up and finish the dungeon. It needs to be ready to repel invaders sooner than I had expected. I would normally punish you both now for not having it done but none of us have the time for you to writhe around screaming for hours or days while I enjoy the sounds that you make.”

  “ Instead of doing that, I am granting you more power to accomplish what I desire. Fail me and I promise you I will make you suffer as few in any world have ever suffered.” Twin spikes of energy were driven into them like railroad spikes. Dark and necromantic energies roared down into Hanks core as a red torrent of demonic essence likewise slammed into Alastor. The process was brutal but quick as the Darkness spoke a few words of power before they both collapsed and then crawled out of the altar room as the Darkness cackled maniacally.

  When it was done it spoke again, “ I have created a Dark Gateway connecting this dungeon to the deepest levels of the Dark Citadel where the Light has never reached. Its purpose is to move more of my minions into this level. Make room for them for they will be arriving soon.” Hank looked over and saw at the other end of the room was a portal of dark energies swirling between the opened ribs of the chest of a dragon skeleton. Somehow just looking at it he knew the dragon’s soul was still trapped in the bones and that its essence was partially powering the portal.

  Once the Darkness was done talking the doors to the altar room slammed shut once more, leaving them sprawled halfway to the scrying pool. As soon as they could rise they went over to the caves rock wall and began frantically teleporting stone block out of the dungeon. The first few rooms and hallways they made weren’t even with any plan in mind, Hank just knew he wasn’t going to fail the Darkness and give it another exc
use to hurt him even more.

  After hours of excavating tunnels and rooms, Hank and Alastor calmed down a bit. They tried taking stock of what had just happened. Hank definitely felt more powerful but it was hard to gauge by how much. He did notice that his aura had darkened from a light blue down to a darker deeper shade of blue. Looking over he noticed Alastor was looking quite a bit taller and more demonic than before. Hank said, “ how do you feel?” Alastor shuddered before he replied, “ I think the Darkness actually ripped apart an entire demon to boost my power levels and crammed most of it into me right through the bond Hank. I am trying to adjust but its going to be a while before I know how I am really doing now and what that even means for me. Some types of demons can consume other demons for their power. Imps are generally not able to do this. At least I didn’t end up with all the other’s memories like you have.